Andrew Marvell and the Lord Wharton

Abstract

Two uncollected letters by Andrew Marvell (9 May 1668, 10 March 1673/4) and a draft of a parliamentary address in his hand may be found in the Wharton papers at the Bodleian Library, Oxford.1 The letters are addressed to Marvell's friend in the House of Lords, Philip, fourth Baron Wharton (1613-96). They reflect the length and closeness of their association, which in turn informs some of Marvell's Restoration publications. They also point to the winter of 1667/8 as the season when Marvell began to hope for more from Charles II as an ally against the Cavalier House of Commons.Although the very model of a parliamentary Puritan, and despite his intimacy with Cromwell, Wharton had survived the Restoration with his circumstances not much reduced to become a major aristocratic supporter of nonconformity. Marvell's eagerness to serve him is consistent with the pattern in his life of seeking to consolidate his connections with the great, not least with a series of great northern lords. Wharton came from Yorkshire and had substantial interests there. Marvell had already developed ties with the Lord General Fairfax, the Duke of Buckingham, and the Earl of Carlisle, and would later befriend the Earl of Anglesey and perhaps William Lord Cavendish (spendthrift son of the third Earl of Devonshire and himself the future Duke of Devonshire). His service to Wharton also reflects Marvell's commitment to Comprehension in the English Church - he may have embraced toleration, or at least indulgence, only more belatedly2 - and exemplifies the low-church sympathies that seem the most consistent feature of Marvell's politics.Of Marvell and Wharton's personal association there was already evidence in a set of letters from Dr Benjamin Worsley to Marvell, in the Christmas season 1671/2, addressed to him at Wharton's house in Winchendon, Bucks.3 Marvell had approached Worsley (a former army surgeon, millenarian, and the long-serving secretary of the Council for Trade) about a West-Country heiress who might make a good match for Wharton's oldest surviving son Thomas (1648-1715). He read Worsley's letters in reply, added brief comment, and forwarded them 'to be broke open by my lord Wharton' (presumably at his preferred country house at Wooburn, Buckinghamshire, where Marvell was soon to visit en route to London).4 Marvell also wrote back to Worsley on this business, which letters have not yet surfaced. Wharton had long been engaged in a concerted search for an appropriate daughter-in-law.5 In the event the present arrangement proved unsuccessful, owing in part to concerns in the family of the intended that Thomas Wharton was likely to become a courtier and a rake. Although far from a courtier under the Stuarts, he was soon a great rake and eventually an even greater Whig.6 There are signs too of Marvell advising Wharton on other business. When Worsley writes to Wharton directly a few weeks later, he urges Wharton to ignore Marvell's counsel discouraging efforts on behalf of an unnamed prisoner (presumably one arrested for conventicling since mention is made of an impending 'generall Release of all, that are in Custody or Confinement of this kinde', 23 January 1671/2, Bodleian MS Rawl. letters 50, fols 132-3).On the parliamentary side, there has been further evidence of connections between Marvell and Wharton, of which rather more deserves to be made. He is named as a supporter in Wharton's parliamentary lists at the beginning of the 1660s, and in a letter of 2 April 1667 from Marvell (London) to Wharton (presumably at Wooburn) he professes 'that I perfectly honour and therefore desire faithfully to serve you.'7 This is a fuller submission than usual in his frequent professions of service, and seems to reflect more than just the Lenten highmindedness characteristic of this letter to his Puritan patron. Some closer association also shows in his apology here that he has 'not yet anything mature enough in the businesse we used to discourse of, which might be worthy your notice. …